Two Driver’s Tests: Having Fun!

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In 1972 my California driver’s license expired after decades of coverage. I had moved to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor to prepare my Ph.D. thesis for publication. I needed to renew my license to commute to the library, shop in the markets, and tour Detroit.  Just in the nick of time before the expiration, I renewed my license at the Ann Arbor DMV.

I easily clinched the license knowledge exam.  Then I waited in line for the driver’s exam.  A short chubby man directed me to drive my car to the curb to let him climb in.  I was driving a very old and questionably safe station wagon with dents, smeared windows, and tattered seats.  He squeezed into the seat leaning uncomfortably over his exam booklet.

He ordered me to turn on to a one-way street, to parallel park, and to stop suddenly.  I jammed on the brakes nearly shoving him into the windshield.  When he told me to drive back to the office, I asked him if I had passed.  “100%,” he replied.  So, I took a chance; I put my arm across the back of the seat and around his shoulder.  He had a fit.  Yelling at me.  Warning me I could fail the test.  Then he calmed down to ask me why I had done this stupid thing.

“Well, I think this test is stupid.  I am supposed to have both hands on the wheel. Yet do you think that I ever have had my hands on the wheel for very long when I have a wife, two children, a dog with whom I talk, pass treats, point out the window at the scenery, or the red tail hawks on the telephone poles?  A realistic test would require me to behave in a real-life situation.  Not some ridiculously sterile procedure.”

He checked his scorecard.  I needed 70 points to pass. He had taken off 25 for my “failure” to drive carefully.  With a sneer, he said, “Luckily you passed.  I never want to see you again!”

In Taiwan and Japan, once I showed the DMV officials my USA driver’s license and paid my fee, I only needed to pass one test. It was a test of my vision, my response to stop signals, and my recognition of colors.

 

In Taiwan, I joined a line in front of a machine that looked like a wheel of fortune.  The examiner operated the wheel to spin and stop quickly.  The wheel was decorated with lines of colors.  As soon as the wheel stopped, the applicant had to yell out the color.  Then it spun and twirled rapidly again, only to stop on another color. I think this was a test for responding to changing traffic lights.  Fortunately, my Chinese language skills were excellent.  I visually recognized the color and its Chinese name.

The Japanese had a similar test.  As applicants stood in a line, an examiner quickly walked past them, spinning a sign with different colors.  As he passed each person, they were to call out the colors on the signs.  With less assurance, I knew the colors.  I was photographed and given a license.

For me, getting a license was both a challenge and a rush.

Scofflaw

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Sometimes it’s not who you are, it’s who you know…

I grew up in rural Western Pennsylvania, Beaver County.  My mother worked at the Beaver County Courthouse, she was a clerk in the tax office where all taxes, including motor vehicle, were collected.

One sunny afternoon just after my junior year in college, I heard loud, resonant knocking on one of the plate glass sliding doors on the front of the house.  It was a Beaver County Police officer and he wanted to know if I was John Maruskin.

I told him I was and he said, “I have a warrant for your arrest. You have to come along with me.”  A rush of hippy horror roiled my brain’s convolutions like volcanic oatmeal, I probably shook, but I managed to ask, more or less calmly, “Why?”

The officer explained that I never paid near 100 parking tickets in Beaver, PA, ranging over a number of years , that I was a “Scofflaw” and that since I had ignored summonses, I was going to be arrested.

When I explained that I hadn’t lived in Beaver County for most of the last three years as I’d been in school in Washington, DC, he gave me an exasperated scowl and said: “Is your name John Maruskin?”  Since I’d already admitted it, I couldn’t suddenly change my story and say I was just a cousin visiting from “the old country.”

“Yes,” I said, “but…”

“No buts.  I’ve got a warrant for your arrest and you’re coming with me.”

“Wait,” I said, “I haven’t been in Beaver a hundred times in my life.  In fact, the only time I’ve been there in the past few years is when I’ve gone to have lunch with my mother who works…”

And then, as they say, it hit me.

“What kind of car was illegally parked?”  I asked.

“A yellow Chevy Malibu.”

“Oh,” I replied, breathing a sigh of relief, but trying not to seem flip. “That’s my mother’s car.  It’s registered under my father’s name, the same as mine, but my mother drives it to work every day at the courthouse.”

The officer’s attitude changed from adamant to jovial in a moment.

“You’re Dorothy Maruskin’s son?”

“Yes.  She works in the tax office.”

“Yeah, I know her, she’s a real nice lady.  Okay, I’ll go talk to her. Sorry.  Goodbye.”  He walked away.  I sank on the porch glider and recovered.

That evening when my mother got home I asked, “Why aren’t you in jail?”

She held up one index finger, gave a me coy smile, and one of those looks that said, this is just between us.  Then she said, real breezy, “Oh yes, a police officer came by and said he’d notice my car was parked near an expired meter.  He warned me not to do that because I could get a ticket.”

End of story. Whether or not she paid the fines, I never found out.  I doubt it.  My uncle was the police captain in Aliquippa, and a shot and a beer were sufficient to clear a ticket if the offender caught him off duty.  Heck, on duty.  Not corruption, comity

Sometimes it’s not who you know, it’s who knows your mother.